The clearest evidence so far that politicians are planning to kick the vexed question of university tuition fees into the long grass until after the general election came at this week's Guardian higher education summit.

When the introduction of £3,000 tuition fees at universities in England squeaked through Parliament in 2004, ministers promised a review of the limit this year. Some university leaders, facing the prospect of declining public funding as the recession hits public finances, are keen to see the cap lifted to allow them to charge as much as £6,000 to £7,000. But that would be unpopular in an election year.

David Lammy, the higher education minister, said that the review would get underway this year – possibly in the summer – but asked if it would be finished, conceded "no". Ministers were keen to a much wider review of higher education, he said.

David Willetts, the Conservative higher education spokesman, publicly urged the government to get on with the review of fees because the problem was so difficult but he said he could "see the case" for a review stretching out to June 2010 – in other words until after the election.

He cited the agreement before the 1997 election between the then Tory education secretary Gillian Shephard and Labour's David Blunkett to set up the Dearing review of student funding which effectively took tuition fees off the political agenda until after the electoral battle. In that case ministers had discussed the issue and composition of the review with the opposition. "I would be up for that sort of conversation," Willetts told Education Guardian.

Universities may well play along with that. David Eastwood, chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce), is on record as saying the fees cap would not be lifted before 2013 and told the Guardian conference today that in light of the recession "any change is probably being pushed back".

Eastwood said that since 2005 all parties agreed it was a major issue that could not be ducked. "I don't think that is best done around the doorsteps in an election," he said.

Students disagree. The National Union of Students wants fees to be an issue on the doorstep. Wes Streeting, the NUS president, told the conference the public should not be denied a debate at the next general election. He urged ministers not to be "shy" and come clean on the review group. Streeting said raising the fees cap would lead to a market in which the most prestigious institutions could charge more. "Rich institutions will be teaching the rich students and poor institutions teaching the poorest," he said.

Willetts confessed he did not have a "secret plan" for the fees problem and said the proposals put forward were trickier than they at first appeared. Simply raising the fees cap, for instance, would involve added public expenditure for the student loans covering higher fees.

If a Conservative government inherited a "fiscal mess", that was unlikely, suggested Willetts.

A solution to that problem would be to raise the rate of interest paid by students on their loans – currently it is zero in real terms and covers only inflation. Dropping the interest rate subsidy – a policy strongly urged by Professor Nicholas Barr, of the London School of Economics, at the summit earlier – would cut the cost to the taxpayer but would not help in the short term, pointed out Willetts. "You couldn't do it retrospectively on student loans that have already been made," he said.

Barr is not arguing for a commercial rate of interest, but a rate to cover the cost at which the government borrows which is lower. It would still be an unpopular policy, however, though it might be pushed through as part of a package of painful cuts to get the public finances back on track after the recession, speculate some vice-chancellors.